


Finding Polaris

by Arya_Silvertongue



Series: Gospel of the North [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Assassin Training, F/F, F/M, Identity Issues, Magic, POV Third Person Limited, Religion, Skinchanging, Unreliable Narrator, Warging
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25805482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Silvertongue/pseuds/Arya_Silvertongue
Summary: Of all the old gods' beloved children, it is Arya who wanders the farthest from home.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Bran Stark, Arya Stark/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Arya Stark
Series: Gospel of the North [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1399309
Comments: 13
Kudos: 71





	Finding Polaris

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be for Father's Day (and the anniversary of the Gospel series), but I got distracted by shiny things. My sincerest apologies. Better late than never, I suppose. Enjoy :)

She woke up with a howl stuck between her teeth.

It used to be easier, stepping out of a beast’s skin and returning to frail, human flesh. But that had been when the promise of snow and meat and vengeance awaited her the next night, when freedom had still been all but a promise. Now, it was an iron coin tossed in the air by cruel gods. Tonight, she might be with her cousins, running across frozen and familiar land. Tomorrow, she could close her eyes and be greeted with nothing but darkness.

_Arya Stark. My name is Arya Stark._

The wolf dreams were fading.

When she returned from her service to Izembaro, washing away the memory of Mercedene like salt mist against skin that labored under the sun for hours, she had been certain that the kindly man would know of what she did to Raff the Sweetling.

Instead, he had given her a soft smile and a new name, and she was sent to the Iron Bank to learn about sums and impregnable cages. When she returned a moon later, the priest had asked about what she learned, and he’d sent her to bed with lemon cake.

She’d woken up the next morning without her voice, the kindly man’s musings on debts and due echoing loud against the walls of her quiet cell.

_All men must serve._

_Think so?_

It was only in the wolf dreams that she could snarl and cry to her heart’s content, and even that was being taken from her.

“The Unmasking begins tomorrow,” the kindly man told her. “You shall serve then.”

She was about to open her mouth to respond, her thoughts now as Braavosi as her tongue, before she remembered that she could not so much as whimper.

“Who are you?” the priest asked.

Her eyes prickled with unshed tears, and the howl inside her fought against metal chains. Feet bare, stomach full, and hair longer than it had ever been her entire life, she’d never felt as trapped as she did in the moment, bound by kind eyes that saw everything.

“No one,” she finally gasped, the words both a surrender and a vow.

The kindly man held her gaze for a long time.

“Very well,” he said, sounding satisfied.

That night, she didn’t dream at all.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

Qarro Volentin knew her as Rhion, a young bravo whose father had been a disgraced merchant, so this time they gave her a girl’s face.

Inarra of Silty Town was another orphan, who barely knew how to count and could not carry anything sharper than a skinning knife. She had long hair that she kept in two braids, and wore the same rags everyone working in the Sealord’s kitchens did.

“Would you _move_ , girl!”

There was a loud crash, followed by the sound of crates toppling over, before Inarra was shoved to the side, Dama’s looming figure dwarfing her slight form.

Dama was the cook who ruled over everything that went on in the kitchens, an ill-tempered, old woman born in the Sunset Isles but raised in Braavos, who could name every spice grown this side of the Narrow Sea. She’d been preparing food for Ferrego Antaryon long before he’d been made Sealord, and she ran things tighter than a Sothoryi pirate ship.

For the past two days, she took no notice of Inarra, a young maid who barely spoke the least of her worries. The new girl chopped onions and roasted meat, and usually kept to herself. But the celebrations had taken a toll on the entire Palace, and Dama had never had much patience to speak of.

“Lay off her, you foul woman.”

The remark came from a boy no older than Inarra, the same one who delivered fresh potatoes every morning and always kept a piece for himself, winking at all the kitchen maids as he bit into it in plain view of the head cook.

“You all right there, Arra?”

He’d also set his eyes on Inarra, and would often call her by a name that was a mere breath away from what people used to call a different girl, from a different life.

“Don’t you start with me, Valerin! And stop sitting on my potatoes!”

The intrusion took Dama’s ire away from her new kitchen maid, and from the easy smile on Valerin’s face, it was what he’d been going for.

“Aye. A festive third day of the Unmasking to you all, then.” He picked up one more potato and began to leave the kitchens with a flourish. “Might find meself a mask to wear at the Moon Pool tonight.”

He was gone before Dama could hurl a spoon at his head.

“Rascals, the lot of ‘em,” the cook grumbled. “More trouble than they’re worth.”

Inarra looked down at her feet, and fought the urge to smile.

The rest of the day went on the same as the first two did. Work at kitchens was hard, but it’s nothing Inarra hadn’t seen before. Her father had once been a cook for another, lesser Braavosi house, before fever took him and left her alone to fend for herself. The Palace had many mouths to feed, and Inarra was learning new things every hour. She still could not bake bread to save her life, and any soup she made ended up too salty at best, but being a kitchen maid got her where she needed to be.

This time, it was by the Sealord’s side.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

“Clams and white beans for tonight, m’lord.”

Ferrego of House Antaryon was old. Sick and old.

His long hair was the color of pure snow; his dark and sad eyes were sitting atop a wrinkled and shrunken face that, in his youth, might have been beautiful.

“Hello, old friend.” Ferrego raised weathered fingers and gave leave for his visitors to enter his chambers. “And my, that smells wonderful.”

Every night, without fail, the Sealord’s supper would be brought in by Dama, and the two would spend the rest of the meal talking of many things.

The day she arrived, Inarra had been brought aside by the head cook, asked if she was as quiet elsewhere as she was in the kitchens, and had been tasked with carrying the second tray to the Palace’s main chambers.

For the third time since she’d started, Inarra looked at the pair, trading stories as though the woman were not a servant and he, the most powerful man in the city, and wondered about many things.

“It won’t be for long,” said the Sealord, looking out his window with a sad smile. “I can feel it.”

Dama made a tutting sound. “Hush now, Rego. Don’t speak of such things.”

Ferrego turned to face his cook and friend.

“But I am right,” he said. Then, he shifted his gaze to land on Inarra, and the girl tried to stand as still as she could. “Aren’t I?”

It was the first time the Sealord acknowledged Inarra’s presence. When Dama followed his eyes, she sighed and shook her head.

“Leave the poor wench alone and finish your supper, m’lord.”

After a long moment, Ferrego relented.

Inarra watched as he ate the rest of his food, every move making his face twist in pain.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

_The Many-Faced God has given a name._

“The Sealord?” she almost shouted. “You wish for me to kill the _Sealord_ of Braavos?”

A long time spent in silence had made her unaccustomed to the sound of her voice.

After the last echo of her words faded, the kindly man shook his head.

“I have no wishes,” he told her. “Nor desires. It is the will of the Many-Faced God to give the gift to Ferrego Antaryon. It shall be done.”

She tried and failed to keep the frown from showing on her face. “I thought we were only meant to give the gift to strangers.”

The priest nodded. “Indeed.”

This time, she did not bother to fight her confusion. “But he is the Sealord. _I_ know his name.”

It bothered her, how none of the queries even surprised the kindly man.

“You know _of_ him, but do you know his face?” he countered. “Have you spoken to him? Do you have any quarrel with him? Affection? Disdain?”

Before she could respond, the kindly man continued.

“ _Valar Morghulis_ ,” he told her. “All men. Regardless of creed and station.” He paused to take a breath, and leveled her with an even stare. “If you do not wish to do this service, you need only speak it.”

_No wishes. No desires._

“This is a gift not without consequence,” was what she said instead. “The canals of Braavos will run red for a long time.”

Having gotten his answer, the kindly man merely gave her another soft smile.

“Every death has consequences.”

\- - - - - - - - - - -

On the fourth night of the Unmasking, Inarra went to the Sealord’s chambers alone.

When Ferrego saw her with his supper, there was no surprise on his face.

“She is upset with me, isn’t she.”

Instead of responding, Inarra placed the tray on top of the large, wooden table at the center of room. This time, the supper was mutton pie and black soup, the kind Dama made for when the Sealord complained about his aching belly.

“Are you mute, girl?”

The Sealord’s question held a demand, in a tone only highborn people could ever really emulate, yet his eyes were drawn to the flickering light from the candle near his bed.

It was something on the old man’s face, perhaps the shadows that spoke of a familiar sorrow, that made Inarra open her mouth.

“No.”

Startled, the Sealord looked up and regarded her more carefully than when she’d arrived.

“My lord,” Inarra added.

For a long while, all the Sealord did was stare at her.

Despite her feeble nature, Inarra had long ago taught herself not to crumple in the face of powerful men. They were few things that had not already been done to her, after all.

But it was not anger for her insolence that she could see in Ferrego Antaryon’s gaze, that made her feel like squirming. It was recognition.

After what seemed like ages, he began to speak again.

“What is your name, girl?”

She waited a breath before saying, “Inarra, my lord.”

The words sounded strange coming from peasant lips, but she couldn’t find the strength to care.

“But you may call me Arra.”

Inarra remembered how she froze, the first time Valerin called her that. She didn’t know what urged her, to extend the same courtesy she merely tolerated with the potato boy, but she did it. Perhaps that way, lying to an old, dying man would not feel as cruel.

Whatever it was that the Sealord saw in her eyes and heard in her response he deemed to pass muster. He looked away and gave his supper a fleeting glance, but Inarra knew that he was still very much not done with her.

“Do you know who _I_ am?”

Inarra made herself nod. “You are the Sealord of Braavos.”

The tepid, black soup that had been hot when she left the kitchens got a scowl from the old man.

“And do you know what that means?”

There was a slight hitch in her breath as Inarra discarded all the other answers that first came to mind.

“It means you have the best meals in the city,” she told him. “My lord.”

Under the light of a waxing moon, Inarra could see a small smile at the corner of the Sealord’s thinning lips.

“Quite,” he said.

Once he was finished with covering every inch of the tray, he looked up and, to Inarra’s surprise, slightly dipped his chin to give her a short bow.

“I am Ferrego Antaryon,” the Sealord told her. “But some people call me Rego.”

Most cupbearers and servants never really learned to make noise while in the presence of nobles, much less friendly conversation. Nevertheless, Inarra felt compelled to open her mouth.

“Dama does,” said Inarra.

There was a brief flash of surprise in the old man’s face, before something soft and tender took its place.

“Yes,” he replied. “That she does.”

It took great effort and a long moment of silence, but the Sealord finally lowered himself on one of the chairs. Picking up his spoon, he made a gesture towards the corner of the chambers where Inarra stood.

“Sit.”

Inarra blinked. “My lord?”

Ferrego stilled, empty spoon just above his beautiful, silver bowl. When he looked up, one of his eyebrows was raised. He made no attempt to repeat himself, which was a sharp reminder of his high birth.

“I can’t,” Inarra continued. She could hear the genuine apprehension in her voice, and were she anywhere else, it would’ve earned her a bruise. “It is not proper.”

Despite herself, Inarra began to wonder about the nature of the old man’s sickness. Addled mind, perhaps.

After blinking a few times at what must be a frown on his kitchen maid’s face, Ferrego turned his focus back on his soup, scowling once more.

“Remember when you said that I am the Sealord of Braavos?” the Sealord asked. “It does not only mean that I get the best meals.”

He scooped up a spoonful of dark liquid that Inarra knew smelled foul and tasted even more terrible.

“I also get to say what’s proper.”

Left with no other excuse in the wake of such declaration, Inarra walked the distance between her spot and the table, and sat on the chair in front of the Sealord.

“Now,” the old man began, swallowing his dreadful soup and lowering a weathered hand to do it all over again, “tell me what is happening in Braavos right now. It is the Unmasking, yes? Tell me everything.”

\- - - - - - - - - - -

The rest of the night went on with Ferrego asking her questions about the city in between bites. The more stories Inarra shared, the brighter his eyes became.

It was a good look on the Sealord, the naked interest and excitement. It cleared away the weariness, and made Inarra see past the face of a dying, powerful man and find someone who loved Braavos a great deal.

“I never really saw the fascination with duels, but the Moon Pool is a great place to study the sweetwater river,” he told Inarra. “Great feat of brilliance, that aqueduct. It was an ancestor of mine, did you know?”

Two more evenings went by like that, and Inarra no longer hesitated when Dama asked her to deliver the Sealord’s supper alone the third time. Ferrego’s own stories of his childhood painted a different Braavos from the one Inarra had known, and tales of places no longer there and people long gone made her better understand the city.

It also made her better understand the Sealord himself.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

In the morning, on the seventh day of the Unmasking, neither Valerin nor the promised potatoes arrived.

Dama, who had been at the end of her tether and had gotten even more agitated as the festivities neared their end, demanded that Inarra scour the Purple Harbor for anyone who could send them the sack they needed, or even rotten _parsnips_ , if the Titan really deemed them unworthy of decent roots, and she told her new kitchen maid not to bother returning if she’d only come empty-handed.

At first, Inarra balked at the task. She never liked going out and wandering the cobbled streets of the city. She preferred to work inside stone walls, unseen and unheard.

Inarra of Silty Town had died under thick, Braavosi fog, after all.

But there was no pleading with the head cook, and Inarra _had_ been preparing for a trip of her own. Only her plan had not been to look for potatoes, no.

She was going to climb the steps of a temple, in a different face, and ask for an explanation. Perhaps even a different name.

_He is a man like any other. It is not for you to judge him._

Inarra hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, plagued as she’d been with fragments of colorful memories, most of it happy and hopeful, none of it hers. After opening her eyes to the sound of a young girl’s voice, almost familiar, whispering promises of a better Braavos for servants and heirs alike, Inarra had decided that something had to be done.

Her resolve was strong, but her plans were not. Perhaps a trip to run errands for Dama could help wrap her arguments in steel.

“I said _left_ , you camel cunt! Left!”

“Coming through! Coming through!”

The sound of porters and merchants filled the air, the cacophony of cursing and hailing uttered in both Braavosi and Trade Tongue. Even the Unmasking of Uthero could not stop the usual grind and huff of toiling in the wharves.

It was familiar and comforting, if a little confusing; Inarra had never spent much time in the harbors before.

The early morning fog had just started to settle the way it did just before high noon when she came across a ship that looked like it carried goods that belonged in a kitchen.

Tentatively, Inarra started to walk towards a group of rough and menacing sailors, the smell of salt and sea strong beneath her nose.

They had already been talking when she got close enough to listen.

“Nearly asked the captain to blast their masts to bits,” one of the men muttered, his eyes lost in the angry haze of what must be an unpleasant memory. “King’s men, my smelly rump. No kings to be found ‘ere, oy!”

The younger man beside him, the one who looked like a roof rat but had hands that belonged with the knots of a proud sail, nodded eagerly.

“One of ‘em had armor on, you say?”

“Aye,” the angry man replied. “Put it on when things got heated. Called hisself a knight an’ all that. Them Sunset Kingdoms never stop, I tell you. Always coming ‘ere like they own everything.”

Inarra stilled.

“Sunset Kingdoms?” The tallest of the three looked away from the open water he’d been staring at. “You got their colors?”

The sailor who’d spoken first frowned. “Colors?”

At his companion’s nod, the man paused, no doubt to live through the memory once more. The other two waited with baited breath, and so did Inarra.

_Sunset Kingdoms. King’s men._

She closed her eyes for a moment, to better control the strange pull that followed every word of the lands across the Narrow Sea.

“Yes,” the man who’d been all but yelling a while ago whispered, nodding vigorously with his own thoughts. “Their sails were the color of lemons. It had those siggles on them. An animal, I think it was. Elk.” He continued to jerk his head in affirmation. “Yes, yes. An elk on fire.”

The tall man, the one Inarra could now see had sharp eyes that spoke of knowledge far beyond that of his companions, nodded at his fellow sailor.

It was the boy with rough hands who broke the silence that followed the other men’s exchange.

“What’d they want here, anyway?” he asked. “Even sailors from the Summer Sea know that Purple is for Braavosi ships.”

“Said they had a bravo aboard.” The angry man flushed red again, but instead of shouting, he settled for a rough shrug. “Don’t matter now. Captain pointed them to Ragman’s soon after. Might they find what their _king_ needs there.”

The rest of the conversation was lost to the wind as Inarra swept past porters and beggars in her haste to flee. Before good sense could stop her legs, she was making her way towards Ragman’s Harbor, the thought of potatoes nothing but a distant memory.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

The third night Inarra brought the Sealord his supper without Dama, Ferrego taught her to play a game he used to love as a child.

“It has no name, I’m afraid.” He placed a wooden board that looked like the Titan’s shield on the table between them. “I suppose we can call it Rego’s Gambit for now.”

His voice was laced with a hint of amusement, and Inarra knew that the name had been chosen a long time ago.

The rules were complicated, but the Sealord breezed through them as though he were talking to a Palace envoy and not a kitchen maid. Inarra, for her part, didn’t bother pretending not to understand every word.

“Let us begin,” the old man declared.

They played well into the night, longer than Inarra had spent in the Sealord’s chambers the previous times.

“Well, look at that.”

Ferrego took his last stone off his end of the board, eyes fixed on the four remaining squares on the other side, the one Inarra claimed for herself.

“It seems I may have chosen the wrong name for this game, don’t you think?”

The old man looked pleased despite his fourth defeat, and Inarra concealed her smirk with a bite of the bread he’d insisted she had. When he slowly got up to place the board and its pieces back into the chest at the foot of his bed, Inarra opened her mouth to speak for the first time that evening.

“Who taught you to play, my lord?”

If the Sealord had been surprised by her question, he didn’t show it.

“My father,” he replied. “Said it was the best way to teach us how to sit still for longer than a moment.”

Telling herself it was a necessary thing to know, Inarra urged, “ _Us_?”

There was a smile in the Sealord’s voice. “Adama and myself.”

He closed the chest and walked towards the window, the same way he did every night before Inarra left.

“We grew up together,” he continued. “My father loved her like she was his own.”

Before she could lose herself in the wistfulness of his words, Inarra remembered who and where she was. She promptly took the game’s end as her bid to leave.

Careful not to make any noise that would break the moment’s peace, Inarra picked up the tray she’d brought with her and went for the door.

As she opened the massive ebony, however, she heard the Sealord call out.

“Do you have a father, girl?”

For a long while, Inarra just stood by the door, her grip on the tray and the hard wood the only thing keeping a shudder at bay.

When she found her voice again, it came out rough and low.

“Once.”

Then, in a manner unbecoming of a mere kitchen maid, Inarra crossed the threshold and left the Sealord’s chambers without another word.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

Inarra’s feet knew their way around Ragman’s Harbor like she were a porter herself. She took the right turns and found the best ways to avoid the thickest of the crowds, body singing with familiarity taken from a past life only half-forgotten.

“Watch it!”

She moved out of the way before a burly porter with sun-kissed skin could hit her with the crate he’d been carrying, already beginning to fail at being unseen and unheard.

Halfway to the docks, she could already see it.

The ship was not as large as the ones in the Purple Harbor, nor was it as gaudy or inviting to the eye as the vessels that came from Tyrosh or Volantis. It was, however, painfully familiar, the symbol emblazoned on its bellowing sails not quite right, but very much not unknown.

The sight of it made her freeze in the middle of the harbor, heart racing against her chest. Between one breath and another, the stones beneath her feet shifted, as though in a dream.

To the people looking, she had a face that bore an ugly scar on her jaw, just below the left ear. Her eyebrows were thick and uneven, and her nose pointed slightly to the right; it had been broken in two places and had never gotten to heal right.

Inside, however, only the bright grey eyes remained; the mask of Inarra, born in Silty Town in the city of Braavos, fell away.

_A black crowned stag, on a field of gold. House Baratheon._

_Do you have a father, girl?_

_I know the king, yes. We were boys together. He is a dear friend._

Only the ship did not carry the banner of House Baratheon. There was a black stag, yes, but it was within a red heart, one that was surrounded in flames.

“Lower the plank!” one of the sailors shouted.

Still, the colors called out to her, and she made herself close the distance between where she stood and the edge of the docks.

A short moment later, a large man with pale, white hair came down from the ship. He was not wearing the armor those sailors from the Purple had talked about, just a tunic with odd, round symbols on it, but something about him reminded her of a knight.

“Ser!”

Another man followed the knight down the plank, this time a thin and gaunt fellow who wore purple robes with a stiff, high collar. He clutched what looked like a hat with one hand, and tumbled down to the docks in haste.

“We must hurry,” the man in purple said. “There is much to discuss.”

The fair-haired man turned to his companion with a sneer, his gloved hand thrusting a crumpled piece of paper between them.

“Did you not understand anything from this message?”

The other man waved an impatient hand. “It is a small matter. We follow the plan, as your king instructed.”

For a moment, the knight was too stunned to speak. He opened his mouth once, twice, with no sound coming out each time. When he was able to speak again, the strain in his voice was barely concealed.

“A s _mall_ matter _?_ ” he asked in disbelief. “The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is dead! The same one whose support is _vital_ to the victory of _my king_.”

A small distance from the pair, the girl hiding behind a stack of crates went very still.

The impassioned remark was only met with a flat and disinterested look, one likely to be seen in the faces of mummers outside the stage, or debt collectors.

“Just so,” said the purple man, “But all the same, there is an agreement to be honored. From what I gathered, the fate of your land is at stake, and Jon Snow is only one man. His death changes nothing.”

\- - - - - - - - - - -

_I will miss you, little sister._

_I wish you were coming with us._

_Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?_

\- - - - - - - - - - -

She ran.

She ran as far as her feet could take her, as hard as her breath would allow. Over bridges, beneath looming towers, past the shoulders of bravos in celebration, she ran.

_Jon Snow is only one man. His death changes nothing._

Her legs were sore, and there’s a scream frozen at the center of her chest. If she closed her eyes against the blur of the shapes and colors she’s running past, she could hear a distant cry, a howl calling to her from across the sea.

Before she could respond, or reach out to the summon that seemed to pull at something where her heart should be, she ran right into something hard, sending her tumbling down and against the rough, cobbled street.

The world was still spinning when she got her bearings back, a strong grip supporting her arms as she began to stand.

She tried to push whoever it was away, the urge to snarl and lash out thrumming under her skin. She succeeded in escaping the clutches of strange hands and regained her balance, but when she looked up, the world stilled.

It was Valerin.

“Are you all right?”

It was Valerin, only not.

He wore the same rags he draped over himself every day, and his hair was the same disheveled mess, but her eyes saw the way his legs trembled, unsteady and frail-looking, as though he’d forgotten what it was like to walk on solid ground.

_Are you all right?_

He was also not speaking Braavosi, his words flowing in the same soft and melodious way as the tongue those two men from the docks had spoken in. The same lilt as the news that had ripped everything inside her to shreds, leaving behind it a fathomless storm that continued to rage inside her.

_His death changes nothing._

Valerin was not supposed to have blue eyes.

“Hey. Hey, it’s all right.”

Before she knew it, her legs started to buckle, the weight of the memory threatening to pull her under. If it weren’t for Valerin’s arms, she would’ve fallen on her face.

“It’s all right. Everything’s all right.” He whispered words of comfort against her hair, holding her tight as her entire body began to tremble. “You’re safe now. Everything’s all right.”

As the rest of the world fell away, her last thought had been of snow, and the distinct certainly that it was not supposed to happen this way.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

On the ninth day of the Unmasking, the Sealord offered his kitchen maid to play a game.

“It ain’t proper, m’lord.”

The old man frowned, and raised an eyebrow at Inarra.

“It never stopped you last night,” he said. “And I am the Sealord, am I not?”

Inarra dipped her chin in a repentant bow. “Apologies.”

“Nonsense.” Ferrego waved a weathered hand in front of his face. “We could play again.”

His demand was met with a flat smile, the stretch of it against her lips pulling at her thick scar.

“I wouldn’t know how to, m’lord.”

\- - - - - - - - - - -

The last day of the Unmasking was met with boundless revelry.

As the Titan’s roar signaled the coming of midnight, thousands of bravos and guests removed their masks and celebrated another fruitful year.

In his chambers at highest tower of the Sealord’s Palace, Ferrego Antaryon breathed his last.

\- - - - - - - - - - -

“The Many-Faced God thanks you for your service.”

The girl with grey eyes acknowledged the remark with a soft bow, before making her way to the door of the sanctum.

When she reached the pool, she found it almost deserted. It was not an uncommon sight, especially a day away from the celebrations of the Unmasking. There were few reasons to wish for death in the wake of such festivities, after all.

She walked until she reached the statues, mildly surprised to see two acolytes tending to someone beneath the Weeping Woman.

The girl gives the body a single fleeting glance, before moving on to the Lion of Night.

After her circuit around the stone figures, she went to her sleeping cell, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

That same evening, a priest hung another mask on the wall: the sad and weary face that once belonged to Adama of Purple Harbor.


End file.
